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BBC Sides with Israeli "War Language" After Lunch with
Diplomats
LONDON, August 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - BBC banned its reporters in London from describing Israeli killings of Palestinian occupation resistance activists as "assassinations", news agencies reported Saturday.
Instead, the reporters have been told to use Israel's own euphemism for the murders, calling them 'targeted killings', the U.K. daily The Independent reported.
According to the paper, the circular is a "major surrender to Israeli diplomatic pressure".
BBC journalists were astonished that the assignment editor Malcolm Downing should have sent out the memorandum to staff, stating that the word "assassinations" 'should only be used for high-profile political assassinations'.
Downing told his staff that there are many other words for death.
"Downing's memorandum suggests that the murder of a leading Israeli - the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, killed by an Israeli extremist - is worthy of the word 'assassination' while the killing of Palestinians is not," said the paper.
In his memo, Downing urged the reporters to "use the word assassination sparingly and with attribution."
The ban resulted from a discussion between Downing and Vin Ray, deputy head of newsgathering at BBC World TV, after Israeli diplomats lunched with BBC officials and complained that the corporation' coverage was allegedly anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, the Independent added.
The Israeli murder campaign is, in fact, far from "targeted", said the Independent, citing the exapmle of the recent Israeli forces' killing of two Palestinian women.
"After the initial reporting of the incident, the BBC dropped all reference to the female victims," said the paper.
However, this is not the only example of BBC's bias against Muslims in general and Arabs in particular.
BBC usually refers to Palestinian occupation resistance activists as
"militants" and to Palestinian resistance movements as "Islamic militant groups."
The following statements from a BBC report is only an example of the corporation's bias against Palestinians:
"The Palestinian militant groups, which are Sunni Muslim, resemble the Lebanese Shiaa militant group Hezbollah in that they are acutely media-conscious and the timing and positioning of attacks are carefully considered to achieve the maximum public impact."
BBC went as far as justifying Israeli atrocities, news agencies said.
"Faced with men who embrace their mission with such zeal, Israeli security forces will have to be extra vigilant to stop them, " the BBC officials said in a recent report.
The BBC is based at Bush House in central London, with national regional newsrooms in Glasgow, Belfast and Cardiff and has an increasing number of the BBC's many international bureau worldwide. The BBC is funded by the British government.
It was first formed as a company in 1922, five years before it received its first Royal Charter and became the British Broadcasting
Corporation.
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